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Forged battalion – Command a custom army and conquer

Forged battalion – Command a custom army and conquer

Forged Battalion is a new and upcoming real time strategy game about making a custom army and waging war. It’s still in early access, but it’s already a fully functional experience, with a couple of tracked on campaign missions and an excuse plot. Anyone familiar with Petroglyph games previous works should know that the project is well in hand and uses the true and tested Command and Conquer setup.

Instead of clicking on a building, then que up units, I simply set a rally point and interact with the menu at the bottom of the screen. This also holds true for buildings. Unfortunately Forged Battalion still relies on retarded workers that will gleefully drive through enemy camps and nimble around a single resource rock, despite more being free. Which is the weakest part of the experience, money making is just lesson in futility and eventually any map will run out. The AI is also very bad I dare say, it’s strategy includes sending a swarm of enemies in my face until empty, then it will keep sending smaller groups.

Once I have whittled the enemy down to size I have to eliminate every building, while the AI gleefully builds new buildings in my face. Basically I have to swarm their base until all structures are gone. At least destroying the power-plant shifts shuts down turrets and unit production by half.

Only when I win or lose I get research points to unlock new weapons and abilities. I started with machine guns and built myself towards lasers and anti material rifles. Which Forged Battalion fails to mention have very long range. Regardless the tech tree allows me to build a cloaked army, a beefy army and a couple more variation. Basically all the buildings can have four different unit configurations, which I have to design myself from the tech tree. Such as wheels, belts and mecha legs. That being said, the nuclear setup is the most power efficient, which means less buildings and more units. A thing that makes it very hard to lose in skirmish is the AI inability to end it when my army is no more.

The art direction is crisp and vibrant, with a simplistic shape language. With a ramshackle story of hammy characters tracked on and a set of almost impossible mission to complete. music is energetic and filled with energy. Never the less, it’s a fairly polished package for a low price, that runs like a charm despite being early access.